Hey Ben & Jerry’s: You boycott Israel, New Jersey boycotts you (Opinion)

Being our strongest ally in the Middle East, and the only true Democracy in the region, we have good reason to rely on Israel and allow Israel to rely on us. That’s why most U.S. states, including New Jersey, have laws that make “BDS” or boycott, divest and sanction actions against Israel illegal.

But pressure by the far left — hippies who’d harassed Ben and Jerry’s for years for selling their ice cream in Gaza and the West Bank — finally succeeded, and Ben & Jerry’s pulled out of the region.

Ironically, the territory withdrawn from is the one that supplies Palestinians with their ice cream. So they’re actually depriving the very people they’re supposedly defending.

Listen, when it comes to hysterical lefties, common sense goes out the window.

For example, clueless college kids pushing for the boycott against Wix, the do-it-yourself website building application that was designed and created in Israel, only to realize they were putting out their shiny new “Boycott WIX” websites on the cool and useful Wix software.

Oops.

A similar cluelessness exists with Ben & Jerry’s, so eager to please those BDS whiners, claiming that the pullout has to do with human rights or peace concerns. Yet, they have no problem continuing to push Ben & Jerry’s yummy “Phish Food” in Iran, China, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and other countries where accusations of oppression have been around for longer, with reports of human rights violations even more egregious than any Palestinian ever claimed.

Don’t Social Justice warriors have Google?

Our own Michael Symons reported that the New Jersey Treasury department decided that Ben & Jerry’s decision to pull out of the West Bank and Gaza violated our anti-BDS laws.

In response, New Jersey yanked its nearly $200 million in pension fund investments from Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company. They divest from Israel, N.J. divests from them. It’s that simple.

In the words of Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr.:

Our law sends the clear message that New Jersey will not tolerate anti-Semitism and we won’t financially support businesses that target Israel There are plenty of businesses that don’t engage in BDS activities where New Jersey’s $90 billion pension fund can be invested to the benefit of our public workers.

New Jersey and now Arizona and many other states are doing the right thing when they hit Unilever back in the pocket the same way Unilever is trying to hit Israel. Truth be told, I’m not worried about a little less Cherry Garcia sold in a small part of Israel.

As Dov Fisher opines in his excellent article in The Jerusalem Post, nobody is stuffing the genie of Israel back into the bottle.

These random illegal boycotts of Israel can’t even make a dent, the country having one of the highest GDP’s in the world with billions invested into the country every day in the high tech sector, natural gas, arms and every country from China to the UAE dumping money into Israel’s economy for all it has to offer.

It’s just the sheer hypocrisy and blatant anti-Semitism of targeting Israel, but selling in Iran where torture, flogging and amputations are still imposed as punishments.

Think about it: Bangladeshi people have to suffer forceful conversion, compulsory marriage and systematic rape of non-Muslim girls but can still get their hands on a pint of Chunky Monkey if they have a hankerin’ for it.

That’s the left for ya’.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi Franco’s own.